Saturday's home matchup vs. Oklahoma will be nationally televised on FSN, with tip slated for 11:00 a.m. CT. Below is the full TV clearance list for FSN as well as local channel info for Central Texas providers.

Struggling to explain why some of her best games have come against a Notre Dame that she's 5-0 against, Baylor senior forward Brooklyn Pope finally comes up with, "I'm the pope, that's why. God's going to bless me first."

This is the playful, stand-up comic side of the 6-foot-1 senior from Fort Worth, Texas, that most people miss. All they see is the sometimes sullen, pouting Pope that talks to herself after missed layups and stares down referees with that "poor, pitiful me," look when she feels like they miss calls.

"Brooklyn's very smart, and as y'all have found out, she's very quick-witted," said Baylor coach Kim Mulkey. "If you ask her to go around the corner, `I'll see you in 10 minutes, and I'm going to put a camera on you, I want you to rap for me,' she can come up with something like this (snapping her fingers)."

Pope is the same way in press conferences. You can pretty much count on Mulkey, other players and even the reporters cracking up at least once with Pope's dry, almost deadpan humor.

Now that she's got it figured out, Pope explains her dominance of Notre Dame by saying, "I'm the pope, so what can they say? I'm going to come in there and lose? No way. They've got to play second-fiddle."

It even goes back to her freshman season at Rutgers, when Pope had five points and three rebounds in just two minutes in a 78-68 win at 13th-ranked Notre Dame on Jan. 27, 2009. At Baylor, she has averaged 11.5 points and 7.5 rebounds in four wins against the Fighting Irish, including 80-61 rout in last year's national championship game.

"I don't know, that's just weird," she said. "I've never lost to them; knock on wood."

That win against Notre Dame was one of the only highlights in a frustrating freshman season at Rutgers that saw the McDonald's All-American average just 2.1 points and 2.0 rebounds in 6.0 minutes in 29 games with the Scarlet Knights.

She couldn't get back to Texas fast enough. The former all-state forward from a state championship program at Fort Worth Dunbar transferred to Baylor after the 2008-09 season and had to sit out the next year because of NCAA rules.

"We've got to realize that Brooklyn was basically away from the game for two years," Mulkey said. "Her freshman year at Rutgers, she never saw the floor. And then she came and sat a year. So, two years away from the game, that's a long time."

"If (Brittney Griner) misses a week of practice and comes back, she's not going to make every shot she usually makes," Pope says. "That's why I was throwing it over the goal (my first year at Baylor). Right now, I'm finally back to the way that I've always been capable of playing. You kind of lose touch, because you haven't been doing it."

That's what made the redshirt year at Baylor so frustrating. While she was glad to be back closer to home, she couldn't stand sitting and watching as the Lady Bears made it to the Final Four.

"I was so lazy," she said. "Even now, I'm still lazy. But my talent covers up a lot of the stuff that I don't do. So, imagine, you're not playing, you know you're not going to get in the game; you barely play in practice. And then you come into a redshirt year where you aren't even a focal point. Coach is worried about the season right then and there, versus, `Brooke, you've got to get in the gym after practice.' Well, after practice, everybody's tired and ready to go home. I feel like I just took scholarship money for my entire redshirt year."

While redshirt junior Cory Jefferson made the most of his redshirt season two years ago, putting on weight and working on his game, Pope said it was a wasted year for her.

"I wasn't running, I was out of shape. I probably weighed 200 pounds," she said. "I didn't do anything my redshirt year but go to class and wait till the next year. I thought when I got back, it would just all come back. Wrong. Wrong."

Pope's biggest struggles came at the offensive end, where she shot just 42.4 percent as a sophomore and improved to 48.3 percent last year, often times missing wide-open layups.

"My defense was fine. I just couldn't finish shots," she said. "So this summer, we went into the gym with the mindset of making every layup that you can possibly put up; get a good grip on the ball and put it in the hoop, because if you make the wide-open layups, there is the possibility that you'll play a little longer."

Mulkey credits her dramatic improvement in shooting this season - she leads the Big 12 and ranks in the top five nationally at 60.3 percent - to better shot selection.

"I knew that if Brooklyn took shots that were good for Brooklyn to finish, that her shooting percentage would go up," she said. "She will still occasionally miss a shot that you wonder how she missed it. But she hasn't been taking those bad shots out of her range that she shouldn't be. . . . I've said all along, she's probably the best offensive rebounder we have. And with a lot of her shots and a lot of her points, she'll be rewarded because of those offensive rebounds."

Since replacing fellow senior Destiny Williams in the starting lineup after a typical 14-point, four-rebound performance against Notre Dame, Pope has averaged 13.6 points and 8.2 rebounds per game while shooting 65.1 percent from the field (28-of-43).

"She's just so strong. If you look at Brooklyn's body, she's a powerful, strong person," Mulkey said. "And she can get in there and bang with you. And it's like I told her, `If you don't finish a shot, make sure you're shooting two free throws.' There is no reason for it. You've worked so hard, get something out of it."

After averaging 7.3 points and 5.3 rebounds for last year's 40-0 national champions, Pope has seen her numbers improve to 11.4 points and 5.9 boards this season. The top-ranked Lady Bears (13-1, 3-0) face No. 17/19 Kansas (11-3, 2-1) at 1:30 p.m. Sunday in a game that will be televised by FSN.

"I came into this year with the mindset that no one can upset me but God," she said. "If Kim plays me, she plays me. If she doesn't, she doesn't. What can I really do about it? Go check myself in? I can't do that. . . . It's sort of like, I can't care, because when you care, that's when you force things. And when you force things, you don't look good."

Pope graduated last summer with a degree in education and is working on her master's degree in communications.

"In my family, getting a degree is not like, `Oh, my gosh, you're the first one,''' Pope said. "Everybody has a degree - my brothers, my mom. If I wouldn't have got a degree, I would have been a disgrace. So now that I went ahead and got it, now they can leave me alone about my education."

While she wants to play in the WNBA and stick with back for "quite some time," her role model is ESPN analyst Kara Lawson, a former Tennessee standout who also plays for the Connecticut Sun in the WNBA.

"I look up to people like that," Pope said. "That's something I could see myself doing. Maybe not something as big as ESPN. But just her eliminating the overseas (basketball) because she still has a job in the states. And that's where the degree comes in. I'm not forced to play basketball until I'm 40 years old."